2 February 2007

1. "Turkey Weighs Cross-border Attack on Kurdish Guerrillas", Turkey made a decisive contribution to the Iraq war nearly four years ago when the parliament in Ankara rejected a US request to allow an invasion from the north.

2. "Ankara debates early elections", statements by the prime minister on Monday implying that the only barrier to holding national elections immediately after the presidential elections was the need to wait for the new election law to take effect have created a stir in Ankara, with political parties discussing ways to move the national elections ahead of October.

3. "House receives Armenian 'genocide' resolution", Democratic and Republican lawmakers introduced a resolution on Tuesday urging the U.S. government to recognize the Armenian genocide.

4. "Turkish army chief says no additional warships sent to Cyprus", Turkey has denied it has sent additional warships to the Eastern Mediterranean, amid a growing row over Cyprus's oil and gas exploration rights in the area.

5. "Poll: Turkish Cypriots Favor Reunification", a record 65 percent of Turkish Cypriots favor a two-state system rather than reunification for the island nation, a recent series of polls and studies found.

6. "Northern Iraq seen as next front in war", as a vote looms on the future of oil-rich Kirkuk, rising violence prompts fear that a third conflict will be ignited in Iraq.

1. - Financial Times - "Turkey Weighs Cross-border Attack on Kurdish Guerrillas":

1 February 2007 / by Vincen Boland

Turkey made a decisive contribution to the Iraq war nearly four years ago when the parliament in Ankara rejected a US request to allow an invasion from the north.

The diplomatic fallout is still casting a shadow over the US-Turkish relationship. Now Turkey could be about to make a second dramatic contribution.

Amid constant bloody clashes between Turkish troops and PKK Kurdish guerrillas operating out of northern Iraq, Ankara is weighing up a cross-border incursion to attack PKK bases. Turkey, its political leaders insist, has the right and the determination to eliminate threats to its territory wherever they come from.

General Yasar Buyukanit, chief of the general staff, is expected to set out Turkey's concerns over Iraq when he visits Washington later this month. One possible outcome intended to guard against a unilateral Turkish intervention would be a joint anti-PKK military operation with US and Iraqi forces, says an analyst who asked not to be named.

Turkey is also becoming alarmed by what it claims is electoral and demographic gerrymandering by Iraqi Kurds in Kirkuk, the oil capital of Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq. Ankara fears that Kurdish control of Kirkuk would give the Iraqi Kurds the economic basis for independence if Iraq were to break up.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey's prime minister, and other Turkish leaders have warned repeatedly that the gerrymandering threatens to make a fait accompli of a referendum on Kirkuk's status later this year that Turkey will not tolerate. Turkey is increasingly identifying with the Turkmen minority in the city, which Ankara believes is being ill-treated by the Kurds.

Some see the danger of fighting erupting in Kirkuk. This would complicate US plans to "surge" troops into Baghdad, commented Glen Howard, head of the Jamestown Foundation, a Washington security think-tank.

"The Turks are now signalling that they are going to arm the Iraqi Turkmen as the Kurds refuse to back off on the [Kirkuk] referendum," he commented.

Some of the talk in Turkey is election-year rhetoric: no Turkish politician ever lost votes by being tough on Kurdish separatism.

But diplomats and analysts say the debate is also serious. A military strike into northern Iraq -- with or without the consent of the US -- is militarily and politically possible, perhaps even probable, some believe.

A senior retired Turkish diplomat, with extensive knowledge of the political and military calculations involved in such a decision, said military planning was not as far advanced as public statements from politicians suggested.

"This is not an easy decision to take, even though we are entitled by international law to undertake such a mission," the diplomat said on condition of anonymity.

"We have to ask ourselves whether it would achieve our objectives, would it satisfy public opinion, what impact it would have on our international relations."

The debate among the Turkish leadership, hesaid, "is hot, but the thinking is not yet at that stage [of military intervention]".

In 2006, the US and Turkish governments each appointed a retired general -- Gen Joseph Ralston of the US and Gen Edip Baser of Turkey -- as "PKK co-ordinators" to develop a strategy to target the separatists in northern Iraq. But last month Mr Erdogan branded the initiative "a failure", without quite specifying how it had failed.

The two generals met senior politicians in Ankara this week and the initiative appears to be still on track.

Mr Erdogan's remark nonetheless indicated Turkey's impatience with the apparent impunity with which the PKK is acting and the inability of the overstretched US and Iraqi military to crack down on the separatists in what is Iraq's most stable region.

Turkey is home to some 15m ethnic Kurds, some of whom openly sympathise with the PKK. Turkey fought a long war against the PKK in the 1980s and 1990s, which cost at least 35,000 lives. It was after that conflict petered out and its leadership was captured that the PKK disappeared into the Iraqi mountains to launch periodic attacks on Turkish soil. Clashes between the Turkish military and the PKK in south-eastern Turkey last year killed scores of Turkish soldiers.

Nicholas Burns, US undersecretary of state, said in Ankara recently that the US had "enormous sympathy" with Turkey's stance on the PKK, but he suggested that Ankara needed to work more closely with Baghdad rather than undertake unilateral moves. Diplomats say Ankara should be spreading largesse among the Kurdish communities. instead of threatening to disrupt the referendum process in Kirkuk. Others say Turkey's entire Iraq strategy -- such as it is -- will fail unless it wins the hearts and minds of the Iraqi Kurds.

Sahin Alpay, an academic and commentator, wrote this week: "The most effective way for Ankara to achieve its objectives in Iraq is to win the trust and friendship of the Iraqi Kurds."

2. - Türkish Daily News - "Ankara debates early elections":

ANKARA / 1 February 2007 / Göksel Bozkurt

Statements by the prime minister on Monday implying that the only barrier to holding national elections immediately after the presidential elections was the need to wait for the new election law to take effect have created a stir in Ankara, with political parties discussing ways to move the national elections ahead of October.

Parliament changed the election law last October, decreasing the minimum age for potential members of Parliament from 30 to 25. However a year is needed before this change comes into effect. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan recently hinted that the government would hold national elections earlier than October, were it not for the fact that this would mean the new legislation would not apply.

According to reports, the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) is expected to announce an earlier election date following the presidential elections. The AKP is considering changing the constitutional article and lifting the one-year waiting period for the law.

Parliament Constitution Commission Chairman Burhan Kuzu, also an AKP member, said he believed that the change made in the election law would not prevent early elections, but even if it did, the constitutional article could be changed.

The opposition Republican People's Party (CHP), which has been campaigning for early elections since early last year, is said to be supportive of the efforts. CHP parliamentary group deputy leader Ali Topuz said they would support any effort that would allow early elections with the changes in the election law in effect.

Motherland Party (ANAVATAN) parliamentary group deputy leader Süleyman Saribas is cautious towards attempts to hold national elections in July or August. “A seven month election campaign after the presidential elections in May will hurt the AKP. This is why the government will try to hold the elections in July.”

3. - AP - "House receives Armenian 'genocide' resolution":

WASHINGTON / 1 February 2007

Democratic and Republican lawmakers introduced a resolution on Tuesday urging the U.S. government to recognize the Armenian genocide.

Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff, a co-sponsor, acknowledged that the resolution might harm U.S.-Turkish relations in the short term. Nevertheless, he said, "I'm optimistic that the relationship will go on. We will move beyond this."

Schiff and other lead sponsors who introduced the resolution in the House of Representatives say they have commitments from more than 150 other members who want to add their names as co-sponsors after the legislation's introduction. That would be a strong show of support in the 435-member body.

The sponsors, who held a press conference Tuesday attended by two Armenian survivors of the events, say that the move to Democratic control in Congress increases the chances that the bill will reach the House floor for a vote. Similar resolutions have been introduced in the past but were kept from a vote by congressional leaders.

"We feel very strongly that this year is the year we're going to get this passed," said another co-sponsor, Democratic Rep. Frank Pallone Jr., whose state, New Jersey, has a large Armenian-American community.

The bill, which claims that 1.5 million Armenians were killed almost a century ago in what it describes as genocide, is likely to draw reactions from Turkey. The Bush administration has warned that even congressional debate on the genocide question could damage relations with a vital Muslim ally and member of NATO.

The resolution's supporters say that the leader of the House, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat, who has expressed support for the resolution, is likely to come under pressure from the Bush administration to keep the House from voting on the bill.

"Make no mistake, the speaker will get a call from the president asking for no vote on the grounds of national security," said Republican Rep. George Radanovich, a co-sponsor.

Turkey strongly opposes the claims that its predecessor state, the Ottoman Empire, caused the Armenian deaths in a planned genocide. The Turkish government has said the toll is wildly inflated and that Armenians were killed or displaced in civil unrest during the empire's collapse and the World War I conditions. Ankara's proposal to Yerevan to set up a joint commission of historians to study events of 1915 is still awaiting a positive response from the Armenian side.

After French lawmakers voted in October to make it a crime to deny that the claims were a genocide, Turkey said it would suspend military relations with France.

Turkey provides vital support for U.S. military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

4. - AFP - "Turkish army chief says no additional warships sent to Cyprus":

ANKARA / 1 February 2007

Turkey has denied it has sent additional warships to the Eastern Mediterranean, amid a growing row over Cyprus's oil and gas exploration rights in the area.

"We already have ships constantly on patrol in the Aegean and the Eastern Mediterranean. We do not need to send new ships," Turkish army chief Yasar Buyukanit told reporters on Thursday just before meeting Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul.

The private NTV news channel reported earlier that Turkey had sent an unspecified number of warships to international waters off the divided island in retaliation for oil and gas exploration deals the internationally-recognised Cyprus government signed with Egypt and Lebanon.

The channel later said that Turkish warships in the region had been instructed to also begin patrols as of Thursday in areas outside their regular field of duty.

The measure had been agreed by the foreign ministry and the general staff in order to convey Ankara's displeasure over the oil and gas deals, it added.

An official from the Cypriot foreign ministry described Turkey's behaviour as a "provocation" and said the government was closely following Turkish military movement in the area.

"We are monitoring the situation in consultation with the National Guard and other security and intelligence forces and we will act accordingly in the event that our territorial waters are violated," Alexandros Zenon said.

"We have to confirm all this and formulate our response," he added.

In a harshly worded statement on Tuesday, the Turkish foreign ministry warned Egypt and Lebanon to delay the deals which it said infringed the rights of the island's breakaway Turkish Cypriot statelet.

"Turkey is determined to protect its rights and interests in the Eastern Mediterranean and will not allow attempts that would erode them," the statement said, declaring the deals invalid.

Turkish Cypriot leader Mehmet Ali Talat, whose Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) is recognised only by Ankara, said his community would not give up on what he called its exploration rights.

"Just as we have not given up on Cyprus, we will not give up on our rights to its natural resources. We are equal with the Greek Cypriots on Cyprus," Talat told reporters during a visit to Istanbul, the Anatolia news agency reported.

The Cyprus government signed an agreement with Lebanon on January 17 for the delineation of an undersea border to facilitate future oil and gas exploration.

Similar accords were struck with Egypt last year.

"We have every right to defend our statehood and to exercise our sovereign right as a full member of the European Union and the United Nations," Cypriot Commerce Minister Antonis Michaelides told state radio Wednesday in response to Turkey's objections.

Cyprus has been divided along ethnic lines since 1974, when Turkey seized its northern third in response to a short-lived Athens-engineered Greek Cypriot coup in Nicosia aimed at uniting the island with Greece.

Turkey does not recognise the Greek Cypriot government which controls the southern two-thirds of the island, but instead acknowledges the TRNC, where it keeps some 40,000 troops.

5. - UPI - "Poll: Turkish Cypriots Favor Reunification":

1 February 2007

A record 65 percent of Turkish Cypriots favor a two-state system rather than reunification for the island nation, a recent series of polls and studies found.

The findings -- which resulted from a series of recent polls and studies conducted by Cyprus Social Research and Educational Consultancy Center -- show changing attitudes among Turkish Cypriots on the decades-old Cyprus issue, Today's Zaman reported.

In 2004, a majority of the island's Turkish population voted for a referendum that supported reunification of the Greek and Turkish sections. The referendum failed when Greek Cypriots rejected it.

The European Union proposed direct trade with the Turkish Cypriots soon after the referendum, but that has been blocked by the Greek Cypriots, the newspaper said. Former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan proposed a resolution calling for easing isolation of the Turkish Cypriots, but the resolution has not been passed.

Based on data from recent polls, there has been an improvement in some economic indicators, but not in public services. Up to 15 percent of the population is becoming poorer, due to disproportionate income distribution, the poll showed.

6. - Los Angeles Times - "Northern Iraq seen as next front in war":

As a vote looms on the future of oil-rich Kirkuk, rising violence prompts fear that a third conflict will be ignited in Iraq.

KIRKUK / 1 February 2007 / by Louise Roug

American officials, regional leaders and residents are increasingly worried that this northern oil-rich city could develop into a third front in the country's civil war just as additional U.S. troops arrive in Baghdad and Al Anbar province as reinforcements for battles there.

Al Qaeda-linked fighters recently have surfaced here, launching a wave of lethal attacks, U.S. and Iraqi officials say. The attacks come amid a rise in communal tensions in the months before a referendum on the status of the city and the surrounding province.

Elsewhere in Iraq, Shiite and Sunni Arab Muslims are locked in a bitter civil war. Here, the two groups have a common cause against the Kurds, a non-Arab minority that dominates Iraq's far-northern provinces.

The Kurds, Arabs and Turkmens, another minority group, each want control of this city and the region. At stake are land, water and some of Iraq's richest oil reserves.

None of the groups want war, they say. Yet everyone here appears to be preparing for it.

"They are right when they call it a time bomb," said Sheik Abdul Rahman Obeidi, a prominent Sunni Arab leader in Kirkuk. "We will not leave, and we will not let anyone take Kirkuk. We are ready to fight. We hope we won't have to, but we're ready."

Kurdish leaders, in turn, warn that they will take the city by law or by force.

"People don't have any more patience," said Kurdish Councilman Rebwar Faiq Talabani, sitting in Kirkuk's heavily fortified provincial council building. "They are telling the government, 'If you can't get our rights back, we'll do it by ourselves.' "

Neighboring countries, especially Turkey and Iran, fear that if the Kurds do gain control of Kirkuk, Iraq's semiautonomous Kurdish region would have the confidence and economic power to move toward independence. That could embolden Kurdish militants in the surrounding countries and further destabilize the region. Turkish officials recently have threatened to intervene if the Kurds take over Kirkuk and have warned against efforts to change the city's population balance.

"Turkey cannot stand idly by, watching the efforts to change the demographic structure of Kirkuk," Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said last month, according to the Cihan News Agency.

Turkish officials recently hosted a conference in Ankara, the Turkish capital, on the future of Kirkuk. Participants included Sunni Arab and Turkmen parties as well as the political party affiliated with radical Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr, all of whom oppose Kirkuk's inclusion in Kurdistan. None of the main Kurdish parties were invited, and Kurdish lawmakers responded angrily, denouncing what they described as Turkish interference.

Against this backdrop of ethnic, political and regional tensions, Iraq's new constitution mandates that a referendum on control of Kirkuk be held by the end of this year. If the vote goes ahead as scheduled, most analysts expect the Kurds to win.

Kurdish bureaucrats are pushing through little-noticed administrative decisions that will take away the voting rights of tens of thousands of Arabs.

Last year, at least 325 people were killed and 1,390 wounded in this city of about 1 million. During the first three weeks of this year, bombings and assassinations left 23 dead and 102 injured, police say. And on Sunday, police say, two car bombs killed 11 people and wounded 34.

"We expect increased violence when we get closer to" the referendum, said Maj. Gen. Anwar Mohammed Amin, the top Iraqi commander in Kirkuk.

The emergence of fighters from two radical Islamic groups with ties to Al Qaeda after years of lying low is especially troublesome, officials say. The groups, known as Ansar al Sunna and the Islamic Army in Iraq, have launched a bombing campaign targeting politicians and civilians. Their aim is to foment violence between ethnic and sectarian groups much as they have done in Baghdad and elsewhere, officials say.

Painting Iraq's Sunni Arab guerrillas as Al Qaeda associates serves Kurds in their goal of taking control of Kirkuk and its environs by making the aims of their rivals seem less legitimate.

Assassinations, bombings and attacks on Kurdish parties' headquarters by Shiite militias and Sunni groups linked to Al Qaeda "are now all part of Kirkuk's violent landscape," said a report last month from the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

Turkmen and Arab politicians also have been targeted in apparent retaliation by Kurds.

"Kirkuk is as likely as Baghdad to produce a calamity that can fracture Iraq," the report's authors wrote, recommending a delay of the referendum. The International Crisis Group, a nonprofit think tank based in Belgium, and the U.S. government's bipartisan Iraq Study Group also have recommended postponement.

But for Kurds, this year presents a historic opportunity they won't part with willingly.

If Kirkuk were annexed to their region, Kurds would no longer be economically beholden to the rest of Iraq. Without Kirkuk, however, Kurdistan is not an economically viable state.

Once a distant dream carried in the heart of Kurdish peshmerga fighters as they battled Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's army in the mountains, full independence is now tantalizingly within reach.

If the timetable leading to the referendum is not followed, Kirkuk will be thrust into chaos, said Talabani, the provincial councilman. "It will be a civil war," he said. "Worse than Baghdad, because it will be a battle of ethnicities."

For nationalist Arabs and minority Turkmens, meanwhile, Kurdish appropriation of Kirkuk would signify the first step toward Iraq's disintegration. Turkmens do not want to become part of an independent Kurdistan, but they don't want to be controlled by Baghdad either. Most Arabs want to remain part of a unified Iraq.

As the various constituencies maneuver before the referendum, the issue of just who has the right to vote is emerging as a major point of contention.

In 1957, the year of Kirkuk's last reliable census, Turkmens made up 40% of the population, whereas Kurds composed 35%, Arabs 24% and Christians 1%. In the surrounding province, Kurds were a majority, constituting 55% of the inhabitants.

During the 1970s, however, Hussein forcibly removed 250,000 Kurds from Kirkuk, giving their property to Arabs in an effort to "Arabize" the city and its oil. Many of the new residents were Shiites moved here from villages in the south.

Since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, the demographics have shifted again. Thousands of Arabs and Turkmens have left because of political pressure and violence. And as many as 350,000 Kurds have come to Kirkuk, Iraqi and American officials say. In dilapidated camps throughout the city, thousands of Kurds now wait for property claims to be resolved; Kurdish officials complain that the government in Baghdad is slowing the process.

The Kurds want Arabs who moved here under Hussein to return to the south, and the recent administrative moves are aimed at removing them as potential voters in the referendum.

Kurdish officials have recently proposed a cash incentive for Arabs, compensation of about $19,000 for each family willing to give up property and voting rights in the city. The tens of thousands of Arabs affected would be allowed to stay — though required to live in other accommodations — but would not be able to vote on Kirkuk's future, the officials say.

"I don't believe they have the right to vote in the referendum," said Adnan Mufti, the powerful speaker of Kurdistan's regional parliament. Even Arabs born in Kirkuk to parents who came from the south will be ineligible, he said. "It's the mistake of their fathers."

Arabs and Turkmens accuse Kurdish politicians of gerrymandering and administrative jujitsu. "Many of the Kurds who returned to Kirkuk are not the original residents of the city," said Abass Ahmed, a 60-year-old Turkmen. "They are actually Kurds from other Kurdish regions."

Because of the demographic shifts and the Sunni Arab boycott of the 2005 election, Arabs already have little representation in the city. Kurds control 26 of the 41 provincial council seats as well as the army, police and intelligence services in the city.

Iraqi security forces here mostly strike against Arab neighborhoods, said Amin, the Iraqi commander. But this is because Ansar al Sunna and the Islamic Army in Iraq are primarily Arab groups, he added.

But residents and international observers accuse the Kurds of abusing Arabs and Turkmens and holding them in secret and largely unsupervised prison facilities.

"We are being insulted especially in the Arab villages and the Arab neighborhoods," said Obeidi, the Sunni Arab sheik. "I think, for the Kurdish forces, it's like revenge."

These alleged human rights violations inflame the situation, analysts warn and local politicians confirm.

"We are all arming ourselves," a politician from Kirkuk recently told the International Crisis Group. "We are afraid. There is talk of civil war. Anything could start it."